"Oh, Laura!--Oh, my darling Laura! What is it to me, she asks? I, who worship her shadow, who would put my neck down for her to tread upon!--Then he does visit you?"
"He does visit me. Does that answer content you? You deny that you have been drinking, Sir Charles Mitford, and yet you go on with this senseless rodomontade!"
"Then let him look out for himself, Laura Hammond!--that's all I have to say;--let him look out for himself."
"He is perfectly able to do that, if there were occasion. But there is no occasion now!" She took her cue from Dollamore's hint. "I'm not your wife, Sir Charles Mitford, for you to bully and threaten. You have no hold over me. And if you had, I am not a puny white-faced snivelling school-girl, to be put down by big words and black looks!"
"You are not my wife!" he repeated. "No, God knows you speak truth in that, at all events! You are not my wife."
His voice fell, and the tone in which he uttered these words was very low. Did a thought come over him of the "white-faced snivelling school-girl" who was his wife, and whom he had quitted without one word of adieu? Did the white face rise up in judgment before him then, as it would rise up in judgment on a certain grand day? He passed his hand across his eyes and sat silent.
"No, I am not your wife," she continued, "thank God! I never would have been your wife. And now listen, for this is the last time you and I will ever be alone together; yes--I swear it--the last time! What we have been to each other--the nature of the tie between us--you know as well as I. But what prompted me to permit the establishment of such a tie, you do not know, and so I will tell you. Revenge, Sir Charles Mitford, revenge!--that was the sole spur that urged me on to allow my name to be coupled with yours--to allow you to think that you had a hold over me, body and soul. You imagined I cared for you! That poor piece of propriety in England was jealous of me!--jealous of my having robbed her of her pet-lamb, her innocent Southdown! I cared for you then as much as I care for you now--no, I wrong you, I eared for you a little more then, just a little more, because you were useful to me. Now my need for such a tool is ended, and--I cast you off!"
She stood up as ho said these words, and made a motion with her hand, corresponding to the speech, as though throwing him away. He looked at her in astonishment--then his face darkened, and he said:
"Do you dare to tell me this?"
"I dare anything," she replied, "as you might have learnt ere this. Do you recollect the night in the fir-plantation, when your friend Captain Bligh came out in search of you, and we stood together within an arm's length of him? What did I dare then?"